MANAGEMENT OF URBAN DISTRIBUTION GAS PIPELINE THROUGH THE ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS: CASE STUDY IN SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL

The article presents a methodology for market research based on urban indicators that aims to develop procedures to analyze and guide the expansion of the physical network of piped natural gas within a municipality through the study of different consuming sectors, based on the urban dynamics that determines the characteristics of occupation of the neighborhoods in big cities. The creation of a model is suggested as a way of basing the decision-making through the assessment of interactions between components of a system represented by four databases, called "information systems" and the degrees of influence of its parameters in the determination of attractive areas for underground natural gas infrastructure. The study based on Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), using the districts of São Paulo (Brazil) concluded that the influence of urban dynamics has greater relevance or equal to the estimated consumption and that their inclusion models of market research effectively translates the potential to attract the establishment of private infrastructure services, such as natural gas.